About my Dad

Edwin J. McDermott, Esq.
1907-1978

Recently, I have been missing my Dad. A lot. I think of him now, especially while I am swimming laps, remembering the simple, loose, lined '60's Jantzen swim trunks he wore in olive green or khaki. 

Approaching Father's Day, rather than compose some sentimental essay, I am making a list of random facts about him, as they come to mind. The massively interesting, good stuff I remember. Okay, here goes.

He

• was once arrested on Atlantic City beach for bathing without a top on.
• had just come back from horseback riding on Atlantic City beach when he heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
• taught Naval officers accounting at Penn during WWII.
• was one of the youngest lawyers to go before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1932 at the age of 24. 
• graduated third in his class, Order of the Coif, at University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1930.
• entered St. Joseph's College in 1927, at the age of 15.
• rowed single scull on the Schulykill River.
• was a master bridge player.
• regularly bought records from Sam Goody at his first record shop on 9th Avenue in NYC, relying on Sam for au courant recommendations.
• said, "Here. I understand that you should listen to this." while handing me a copy of Meet the Beatles.
• taught me how to work an amplifier and tone arm when I was about five years old and later, how to change a diamond stylus .
• built a woofer and tweeter into the playroom wall of our first house.
• learned the hard way about storing LPs above a tube amp.
• built two giant sound boxes on casters for speakers when stereo hit the market.
• taught me how to body surf.
• took me to see a matinee of Forbidden Planet and explained to me how it was based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Best first date ever. Decades later, I went to a matinee of same and sat a few rows behind a father with his very little daughter. The three of us were almost the only ones in the theater. Yes, I cried.
• always said "Go into the ocean, it'll heal you up." when I hurt myself at the shore.
• read Donald Francis Tovey's Essays in Musical Analysis for fun.
• collected all of the Arthur Quiller Couch and John Dover Wilson editions of Shakespeare.
• knew Shakespeare's plays by heart and would turn to the act, scene and line to show me source of title when I'd come home from school with reading assignments like Brave New World, or The Sound and the Fury.
• loved to walk and took me jogging with him around our neighborhood park or up and down the beach at Longport when jogging became a thing.
• took me regularly to the Robin Hood Dell in the summer. One time, it started raining while Van Cliburn was in the middle of a concerto. Daddy pointed out to me all the umbrellas popping up in the "Friends of the Dell" section and as the Friends scurried out, we dashed up and watched the rest of the concert, a few feet from the stage, sitting on the concrete steps, in the rain. It was fantastic!
• ​loved convertibles filled with beautiful girls before he was married.
• drank a lot when he was young until, according to my late aunt, his doctor told him that he really had to stop.
• attended 6:30 am mass every morning, without ever saying a word about it, at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church at 13th and Market Streets in Philadelphia. 
• collected every volume of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History. When then master photographer, Mr. Okada asked Daddy to give me something to hold in one of my baby pictures, he handed over Toynbee's Greek Civilization and Character. I don't know for sure but this may have been with a sense of humor. At least I think it's funny.
• loved history and the idea, philosophy of history. 
• kept his possessions simple and elegant. This approach applied to his clothing, tools and memorabilia. He splurged on books, records, his wife and children.
• had two good coats (one camel hair, one black cashmere), a cream silk tuxedo scarf, a sports jacket, a couple of fine wool suits, a seersucker suit, Norm Thompson slippers, an Irish Tweed Walking Hat and a classic, Gregory Peck, fedora.
• was an early "health nut" and we always had plenty of wheat germ, black strap molasses, honey with the comb, protein bread.
• kept his treasures on and in the top drawer of his bureau. On top of his bureau, he kept two framed photos, one of his mother, the other of his father. (They were the only photos I ever saw of his parents.) In his top drawer, he kept a letter from Arnold J. Toynbee, a short story he once wrote, a sterling silver swizzle stick from his drinking days, a pair of gold and amber cufflinks, and his Order of the Coif medal. Later, after his brother, Charlie, passed, he added Charlie's eye glass frames. With these, he also kept a scrap of paper with quick notes about my maternal grandmother's origin after a surprise visit from an unknown cousin on my mother's side. But that's another story.
• bought a copy of The Beach Boy's Surfin' USA for my 2nd grade school Pollyanna. I, of course, went for the LP shaped gift and listened to that album as much as any. Over the years, I occasionally wondered who's parent had bought that gift until, decades later, it dawned on me. Of course, Sam Goody.
• rarely gave me advice but once told me, "Always work for yourself."
• was very excited to hand me a copy of the 1973 U.S. Court of Claims document for the Williams & Wilkins Company v. The United States decision, indicating to me now that he knew then that my work would primarily concern intellectual property. And it has.
• had a distinctive whistle: a long G# followed by a smooth ribbon of short G, G#, G, G#, G, repeated twice to call for my brother and/or me. 
• could play untold variations with impeccable skill and invention on the piano of "We are Collegiate" and that's about all I ever heard him play. 
• married late, had children in his late 40s and absolutely loved and adored my mother, my brother and me.
• compiled and published the multi-volume Modern Federal contract law: Modern digest of decisions of United States Court of Claims and of Supreme Court of the United States (U.S. Court of Claims cases) 1969
• specialized in the United States Court of Claims and wrote an article for the American Bar Association Journal, The Court of Claims: The Nation's Conscience. 
• ate half a grapefruit every morning. My Dad loved grapefruit.
• ate oranges over the sink.
• made sure that my brother and I found an orange at the bottom of our Christmas stockings every year.
• enjoyed reading authors' works in chronological order: Graham Greene, Ian Flemming, Erle Stanley Gardner, Joyce Cary.
• collected Modern Library books. 
• was excited by all new technology.
• took some exceptional photographs that demonstrated a sophisticated sense of composition during the 1940s through early 1950s.
• loved the TV show, Secret Agent Man, The Prisoner, and early Masterpiece Theater.
• would love to have gone to Ireland.
• was the son of Charles J. McDermott, originally a drayman, later a Teamster, finally a Motor Freighter. I think that his father owned one of the first trucking companies in Philadelphia. His mother's name was Margaret F. Murphy and I am very sorry to say that that is all I know about her except that she looked very sad in the photo of her young self atop my father's dresser and that my Aunt Peggy threw all photos and identifying information about her parents away after they died.
• used Gaby Suntan Lotion and Noskote.
• walked to the Overbrook, later the Wynnewood train station every weekday morning during our life together and took the Paoli local into Philadelphia.
• taught me to drive in our 1968 Grecian Green Camaro on Sunday mornings in the John Wanamaker Parking lot in Wynnewood, PA.
• signed my brother and me up for swim lessons at Friends' Central when we were knee high. I took to the pool like a fish.
• Santa left me a guitar for my tenth Christmas. When I later found the guitar in two pieces in the attic thanks to my little brother and his friend (boys!), Daddy took me out to Main Line Music and bought me an Aria guitar. When I started performing at local colleges and clubs a few years later, he bought me a Martin D-18. 
• A few years after my father passed, I was at the opening party for the American Film Institute's festival at producer Marty Ransahoff's house in Bel Air. Chatting to an elderly attorney next to me on the sofa, I discovered that my father was his upperclassman at University of Pennsylvania. I'd never met anyone in my personal life who had known my father. The man turned to me and said, "Your father had a huge​ mind."

There's more, and I'll add to this later, but that's enough for now. He taught me to love music, learning and physical exercise, to think critically, and to be myself. I wish that I could have been more helpful to him at the end. Always my first love.